March 29, 2009

I was thinking about that lyric from the Lovin' Spoonful song "Nashville Cats" this morning as we were talking about the old days when you might stay up late at night to pick up the signal of a distant radio station that played music that you couldn't hear during the day.

And the record man said every one is a yellow Sun
Record from Nashville
And up north there ain't nobody buys them
And I said, but I will

And so the boy from the north fell in love with country music. Me, back in the mid-1960s, I liked some college radio station that came in from Fort Wayne, Indiana. I heard songs they didn't play on WABC in New York City. Indiana seemed like a cooler place than NYC. (Oddly, I still think that sometimes.)

I used to write down the names of the artists they played that I'd never heard before. I remember, listening that way, late at night, hearing "I Got You Babe" for the first time and wrote down "Sonny and Cher."

Dewey Phillips was on the air in Memphis around 1950. He was an anomaly at the time: a white DJ spinning regional rhythm and blues hits for black audiences. Rick Wright says Phillips and his African American contemporaries up the dial on Memphis' WDIA helped elevate disc jockeying to an art form.

People like Nat Turner, a young B.B. King, and, one of Wright's favorites, Rufus Thomas. "Now, Rufus comes in, 'Hey baby, this is Rufus Thomas, WDIA Memphis, Tennessee, where you can cop a smile about a quarter mile provided you've got time and don't mind this drive time line we're gonna try.'

Wright says that one Nashville station, WLAC Nashville was owned by the Life and Casualty Insurance Company - L-A-C. He says that that station would take this music and this DJ style to places it had never been. He says the course of American cultural history was changed one Saturday.

"And they were playing, basically, records by Guy Lombardo or whatever and it was that era of a 50,000-watter trying to find itself with no audience," says Wright. "And there were some African American students from Fiske University who had gotten past the security and got up to the station and brought a bunch of 78s with them."

And they walked into the studio and started talking to the DJ. "Mr. Nobles, can you play some of our folks' records on your radio show?"

"All of sudden," says Wright, "the phone started to ring, and the letters and cards were coming from all over the place. And they established that night, one of the real, first, mainstream R&B formats on a major powerhouse radio station. WLAC 1510 Blues Radio Nashville, Tennessee. The only full time R&Ber at night with 50,000 watts."

At night, 50,000 watts get you very far. Bob Dylan has said he owes much of his musical inspiration to listening to WLAC as young teenager all the way up in Minnesota.

***

It was the "Moonstruck" clip that I blogged last night that set me off thinking about Cher and the first time I ever heard her sing. It was observed that I love Cher, and I confessed to my longstanding affection for the durable diva. I loved Cher since the first time I heard 'I Got You Babe' on a radio station from Fort Wayne, Indiana, I said.

I remembered answering some questionnaire at the time about what famous person I would like to be. It was 1965, so I was 14. I said Cher. And it wasn't just that I wanted to be a female pop star. I was entranced by the strong affection that Sonny and Cher showed each other when I saw them on TV.

I searched YouTube for an early appearance — perhaps their first national TV appearance — when the two were singing IGYB while sitting at a little table. They were petting and kissing — a real public display of affection. There are, of course, a lot of clips of them doing that song, but I couldn't find that one or any other where they were transgressively pawing at each other, the PDA I'd seen when I was just 14.

So let me go in a completely different direction and show you this instead...

UPDATE: The video at the end of this post has gone dead, and I don't even remember what it was.

Sometime in 1965 I was driving home one Sunday night from Mankato, MN to St. Paul, MN, in my 1958 Chev Impala convertible, and the only station I could get was WLS out of Chicago. AM radio, it seems to me, was all car radios had. I remember when TV stations went off the air at about midnight. Times sure have changed.

I drove a 1958 Chevy Impala, too, tho not a convertible. I listened to WQXI in Atlanta on my transister radio someone gave me one year. On the car radio, too; back then the top Atlanta DJ was Gary somebody with his sidekick Yetta Levitt. One of my fondest memories is being 13 and hearing the Beatles sing "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" in the car with my best friend, Kate who died the following year. She was a diabetic. But I remember her sister driving us somewhere, listening to that song.

I guess I'm in the John Sebastian camp... I came across 'hillbilly music' and R&B via late-night AM radio while living in the wilds of western MA. Due to my parents love of music, I already had jazz, from New Orleans, through Memphis and St. Louis, all the way up to Chicago down pat. Classical and big band, too.

But the folkier sides of music were unavailable outside of that late-night AM.

I'd pull the bed covers over my head, turn on a flashlight and listen to WLS-AM from Chicago. WLS played rock and roll that couldn't be heard on any local radio stations in Milwaukee. The shows were hosted by Dick Biondi, Barney Pipp and others.

When the hippie and drug era began in the early 60s, WLS broadcast a show called The Subterranean Circus that played new music, often from groups based in the UK. The DJ spoke like he was on drugs-slowly, often nonsensically-while "outer spacey" sound effects played in the background.

If the weather was just right, and it rarely was, my cheap Phillips radio could pull in Wolfman Jack, broadcasting from a radio station somewhere in northern Mexico. His broadcasts sounded like a party, with a lot of background party noise and womens voices.

I thought I could do a pretty good imitation of Wolfman Jack's gravelly voice and hep attitude. A slap to my head administered by my father broke me of the habit after he asked "Where are you going tonight" while handing me the keys to his '61 Impala convertible (fawn beige, white top, 283 V8, three-on-the-tree transmission, I loved that car).

I answered using my best Wolfman Jack voice "It's all accordin' to how your boogaloo situation stands, y' unnerstan'"

As a former Memphis resident now living in Milwaukee, I'm going to put in a plug for Memphis and the Stax and the Rock and Soul museums and Sun Studio. Even without going to Graceland, you could spend a few days living music history in Memphis. Then you could spend another few days eating BBQ, fried chicken and meat and threes (oh, how I miss The Cupboard). You could die fat and happy in Memphis and never have to shovel snow.

She sighed as she looked out the window at the six inches of snow on her Milwaukee driveway.

In 1974 I was parked at the Naval Hospital in Philadelphia, arriving for my 11pm-7am shift when I heard "Killer Queen" supposedly played by some pirate radio station on a ship in international waters. The song was not yet available in the US (the story goes).

I liked the song and though that it would be a big hit, but I still don't know if there is any truth to the supposed circumstances under which I heard it.

Last night I watched a DVD called "Earl Scruggs: The Bluegrass Legend: Family and Friends". It included some old films of Scruggs playing with Roger McGuinn, and others. Seeing and hearing McGuinn again reminded me of how gifted a musician he was. No one could make a twelve-string sound the way he did.

The DVD is exceptional, by the way, and worth watching. The old clips of Scruggs with Baez, Dylan, Doc Watson and others are wonderful.

Here are three I see on the hard disk recorded live off the shortwave aironetwothree(real audio, on modern real players will probably ask to download the old sipr-9 codec that old real players came with).

Tiffany Eckhardt retrieved from the Radio Australia website in 2000, my favorite song writer.

I lived in Lincoln Park in Chicago in the mid-1970s. I didn't have a car, but I did have to go to a class north of Chicago, so my employer rented one for me. I'm primarily a classical music listener, but the car radio was AM only, so I couldn't get WFMT. I was cruising the AM dial and got what turned out to be a New York station, playing "Come Monday" by Jimmy Buffett. I've been a Jimmy Buffett fan ever since, and "Come Monday" is still my favorite Jimmy Buffett song.

I do remember the National Anthem when the stations signed off. And "It's 10:00. Do you know where your children are?" Or maybe that was just our local stations, ha ha.

CF, there are things about Memphis that I miss from time to time. We have some decent meat-and-veggie restaurants around here, not as good as the Cupboard. I miss Molly's on Overton Square, and Neely's BBQ. And the Botanic Garden, and Patriot Lake, blah blah. All I have to do is think about Mayor H and Ophelia Ford and so forth, and I get over it real fast.

I didn't have a '61 Impala, but I did have a '60 Catalina (I've actually had two of them in my time; a 2 door sedan and a 4 door hardtop; The two door was my first car); 389 automatic. I bought it from the original owner in '77 and the first thing I did was install a radio.

It was out of a '65 Cadillac; AM-FM with a Wonderbar (remeber those?), but not stero.

Having always been of the redneck persuasion, I was able to lay my hands on a 14" woofer out of a blown up Guitar amp and rigged it up under the rear deck. I could never understand a word of any of the songs, but man the bass would rattle the windows.

I also remember when TV signed off- not that I was ever up that late- but locally on Saturday nights we had Bob Shreve playing old 'B' movies all night, between the news and the preachers.

One Saturday night we were trated to "Billy the Kid Meets Frankestien"; "Wyatt Earp Meets the Wolfman" and "Doc Holiday Meets Dracula".

You can't do the nighttime thing any longer on the AM band because too many stations are using IBOC, the AM version of digital radio. It receives as a hiss, and occupies three adjacent am channels. So you hear mostly hiss from other distant stations at night when you're trying to hear a specific distant station.

I grew up in a small town and listened to the big city stations on my transistor late at night. I was a Pipp & Biondi listener back then (though I could have sworn the call letters were WCFL). And I remember that CKLW had by far the best/funniest news reports, where they tracked the Motor City Murder Meter and called out guys who dropped bowling balls off overpasses as "sadistic punks." But my favorite was the all night truckers' station, WWL out of New Orleans, with the Charlie Douglas Road Gang doing remote broadcasts from truck stops all over the country.

Even all the way up in Northern Calif. We could get this station. A huge relief from the Country Western stations and the pop top songs on the regular stations. Soul, R&B, Rock and Roll and the new cool stuff from the flowerpower generation.

@Edjamikated - Scruggs would have covered Sebastian. Scruggs decided in the mid 60's that he wanted to play genres of music beyond traditional mountain folk. He played with the Byrds, Baez, Dylan, and quite a few rock bands. The traditionalists hated him for it for a time, but Scrugg's incredible playing (backed by two sons) brought them back.

I think my current car would fit into the trunk of a '60 Catalina coupe!

@PJ - You are correct, it was WCFL, and not WLS. WLS and WCFL were competitors at the time. WCFL is now WLUP. Funny thing is, when I'm in the Chicago broadcast area I now listen to WXRT.

I grew up in a small southern town where the local station (5000 watts!) played country music from 5AM signon to midnight signoff. When I got to hign school and could stay up past 10PM, I discovered WOWO out of Ft. Wayne. They played cool rock 'n roll.

Several years later, after an extended stay outside the country courtesy of my uncle, I lived in Ft. Wayne. By then WOWO was old-fashioned.

As a Fort Wayne native, I grew up with WOWO, but worked hard at picking up WLS from Chicago. WOWO, 50,000 watts, turned its power east during the night. If you could still pick it up at 5 a.m., the programming changed to a farm show with the theme song "The Little Red Barn Down on the Farm in Indiana."

Years later, I was surprised at how many from the East Coast knew about my town from listening to WOWO at night. WOWOW is now talk radio, where you can listen to Rush Limbaugh every afternoon.

Didn't even have a television until I was 16. Saw my first one at a neighbor's home in 1952. Didn't even have an FM radio either. It was AM or shortwave.

I remember listening to the Meisterbrau radio program from somewhere in Wisconsin or Minnesota, I think. All jazz and very late at night. Maybe it was broadcast from Chicago and the brewery was in Wisconsin or Minnesota. The DJ had this very very deep melodious voice.

Yes it was WCFL, The Voice of Labor, that aired Chickenman ("He's everywhere He's everywhere), Ron Britain and his Subterranean Circus, Barney Pip, and Dick Biondi.

But people who grew up all over the east remember listening to WLS, aka "the world listening station," which apparently could be heard as far east as Greenland.

Fort Wayne's WOWO was no college station, but the flagship of Westinghouse Broadcasting. The owners of WLIB in NYC, previously forced to reduce power at dusk, bought WOWO and in effect transferred its clear nighttime channel to WLIB.

Drivers (and parkers) should also remember the necker's knob, which allowed the driver to one-handle the wheel. And who does not miss the bench seat, and its snuggling possibilities?

TV signoff was after the Tonight Show, or The Late Show, long after my bedtime. But signon was right before Crusader Rabbit.

Radio Station WGN 720 broadcast Franklyn MacCormack's Meister Brau Showcase nightly till dawn. Meister Brau was brewed by the Peter Hand Brewery on West North Avenue in Chicago, along the strip currently occupied by big box stores.

Meister Brau's chief legacy is a dietetic beer they called Meister Brau Lite, which Miller bought, chopping off the Meister, and the Brau. (A special fermentation process ate up the residual carbs.) So contemplate "Lite Beer from Peter Hand" next time you hear a commercial.

If you have an phased array antenna on AM, you can null completely away any local station, and (with four elements) the station under it, to hear a truly distant station normally covered completely during the daytime.

Speaking of '61 Impalas, does anyone remember the driving maneuver known as the S.O.B. Turn? The Slide Over, Baby, encouraged the more timid or perhaps ladylike date to move away from the door end of the seat.

lking about picking up the skip stations- technology has taken some of the fun out of that too.

I remember Saturday nights trying to tune in the Grand Ol' Opry on WSM (650 on your AM dial), and it was hit or miss- especially being less than 20 miles from 700 WLW (50,000 watts of radio blowtorch)The nights you would hit would be golden; and few and far between.

WLW was at one point for several years was even permitted to operate at 500,000 watts before half the world compained and they dialed it back to 50,000 again. I think it wa sactually a test for Radio Free Europe, and it was Powell Crosley (owner of WLW, Crosley Radio, appliances and cars and the Cincinnati Reds) who did teh original work for the Voice of America transmitters; whicjh is why they were in Mason Ohio and not Washington DC.

But, I digress.

The internet and live streaming has taken all the fun out seaching for skip stations. Why hang catching a fading AM signal at 3 in the morning when you can live stream or download a podcast teh next morning?

Hell, my I-phone even has an app that allows me to listen to a radio station (AM or FM) from almost any city in the country.

Nothing makes a sound in the night like the wind does/ But you ain't afraid if you're washed in the blood like I was/ The smell of Cape Jasmine through the window screen/ John R and the Wolfman kept me company/ By the light of the radio by my bed....

John R being one of the early WLAC DJs.

I always tried to turn the TV off before the Anthem came on with shots of jets in the air. For some reason I think I was always a bit unnerved by the end of the broadcast day. Perhaps I suspected the world stopped for a while. Obviously too much Twilight Zone as a kid.

There's actually a pretty good song about exactly this bit of nostalgia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtxyxtUoVh8

I know I sure stayed up late to listen to far-off stations. Once I even picked up a station out of Hawaii. (And bragged about it for weeks.) I had a special weakness for the old radio serials, and was always disappointed that I would rarely be able to pick up the same station two nights in a row to see what would happen next.

I grew up just south of Boston, MA and sometimes could pick up WWVA from Wheeling, West Virginia. There was always country music played in Boston bars because of immigrants from the Maritimes, home to Hank Snow and Anne Murray, and northern New England, plus sailors from the midwest and south. That stuff was watered down Nasvhille ballads played for country boys crying into their beer far from home in a big cold city, and local radio stations played none of it. WWVA, to me, was the real deal. Hour after hour of high lonesome sounds late at night. For an Irish-Catholic raised on Gregorian chant, songs like "What if Jesus came to your house today" were mind-blowing.

"Jenny said when she was just five years oldyou know there's nothing happening at allEvery time she puts on the radioThere was nothing goin' down at allThen one fine mornin' she puts on a New York stationShe couldn't believe what she heard at allShe started dancin' to that fine fine musicYou know her life was saved by Rock 'n' Roll."

When I was in 1st and 2nd grade in Wichita Kansas, in 65, 66, 67, I had a little transister radio with an earphone, and I used to listen to soul music as I fell asleep. In the daytime I had to ride my bike clear to a distant store to buy 9 volt bateries for my radio. Then my family moved to the mountains of upstate NY in 1968, and as you may know, mountains prevent those big great plains radio stations from reaching the radios of little girls in their bunk beds.